Austin-based deals app expands to Cedar Park area

App creators hope to hook locals up with deals in upcoming holiday shopping season

Skout Deals, an Austin-based deal finding app, features several local merchants on its app. Part of the platform's model includes localizing deals for users to find near their location.

Courtesy Photo

Courtesy Photo

Alice and Bryan Payne founded Skout Deals in 2015.

Courtesy Photo

Posted
Friday, November 10, 2017 1:12 pm

By NICK BROTHERS, HCN Managing Editor

An Austin-based, deal finding app recently expanded its services to the Cedar Park area, where local businesses are hosting specialized deals.

Skout Deals is a location-based app that can help users find deals for both national and local merchants, which are typically not as simple to find.

The app serves as a one-stop aggregate deal finder. As of Nov. 10, 66,310 deals on everything from haircuts to barbecue grills were available in the Austin metro area.

Users can expect to see coupons for local and national chains, as well as individual brands for savings of 25 percent or more. The deals can be found by merchant, category or keyword and results can be filtered by location. Discounts can be added to online purchases as well as in-store.

Brian Payne, an Austin resident and the founder of Skout Deals, said he and his wife had been thrifty deal finders for years, and wanted to find a way to make finding deals easier and more localized than the similar, popular discount app, Groupon.

“My wife, Alice, and I are deal finders,” Payne said. “The reason we came up with the app was there’s so many deals in so many places it was becoming harder to find a deal. So we thought, wouldn’t it be great if we put all local deals on a map and in two clicks they could find it nearby?”

The app tracks and reports savings to users, as well.

Skout Deals started in 2015 and started with big corporations like Walmart and Best Buy and as of last September, the app has began working closely with local merchants. Payne said one of the goals of the app was to help small businesses compete with the big box stores.

“Businesses, such as Texas Discount Furniture or Studio Nails, for example, can compete side by side with the big guys,” Payne said.

Local businesses can also send exclusive deals to users who have expressed interest in a certain item and would like to see it discounted. Sixteen local businesses have signed up in the last two weeks, Payne said.

“We’re motivated to help people save money and do it easily,” Payne said. “It’s so gratifying.”